The need for contextually appropriate career counselling assessment: Using narrative approaches in career counselling assessment in African contexts

Abstract

This article reports on the value of using narrative approaches in career counselling assessment in African contexts in addition to quantitative approaches to enhance the contextual relevance of assessment. The narrative represents a response to calls for local research on career counselling assessment theory and practice. A number of factors that co-determine the development of theory and assessment-related strategies are elaborated herein. The view is expressed that the feasibilities of the 21st-century labour markets should co-determine assessment-related strategies and theory development. In addition, the imperative to constantly innovate assessment in career counselling is emphasised against the background of the shift in emphasis from climbing the career ladder to flourishing in unstructured occupational contexts before some caveats for the successful implementation of postmodern approaches to assessment in career counselling are explicated briefly. The call for advancing the theory base in career counselling assessment-related matters in Global South contexts in general and African contexts in particular is repeated. It is concluded that career counselling assessment theory and practice should be conceptualised from the key perspective that it should particularly meet the basic criteria of contextual relevance.